Examples of industrial equipment can include electrical fittings and glands, motor and pump control components, panelboards incorporating circuit breakers or other electrical components, switches such as safety switches, enclosures (e.g., terminal enclosures, outlet boxes, junction boxes, explosion-proof enclosures, etc.), lighting and light fittings, plugs and receptacles. Industrial equipment is often deployed in harsh or hazardous environments where degradation can lead to equipment failure. Thus, knowing what equipment has been commissioned, as well as where and when it is commissioned can be important parameters to track. However, tracking can be a tedious process that often gets overlooked or simply ignored.
One way to determine position and monitor status of a product is to provide each product with a GPS (global positioning system) chip. However, adding a GPS to each product introduces several challenges including: (1) the cost of the GPS chip; (2) how to integrate the GPS chip into the product; and (3) access to antennas that are able to receive signals from the GPS (access may be impossible if the location of the product is remote). Alternatively, the GPS location of a product may be manually entered. However, manually entering a GPS coordinate for each product is tedious, error-prone process that will, more likely than not, be omitted due to the large number of products that may be commissioned at one time.